Monday, August 31, 2009

Sebastin: This book was increasingly being presented, in woo woo land, as a sort of upcoming revolution in the humdrum universe of sheepishly mainstream psychologists and neuroscientists (who are mainly materialists by default, obviously not realizing the inconsistencies of such an obsolete position, stupid as they are). You see, mainstream scientists (i.e. not crackpots) have failed to provide evidence that the brain is at all involved in the production of consciousness and mental states. What IM shows however, through more than 800 pages of marshalling irrefutable evidence, is that the brain merely transmits consciousness. Or filters it (whatever that means). So there is a conflict, you see, a controversy between the productive theory, and the transmissive theory of mind-brain relationships. Isn't that great? Every side of the debate has something to bring to the table, and boy, do scientists love a cool controversy to resolve!

Leo: Here he says he has no idea what the transmission theory is. This is coming from someone who appears to know a lot about parapsychology but never came across the two objections to immortality by William James. How convenient is that?.

Sebastin: Well, that's the message, folks, there's nothing else in there. The authors of IM are simply deep into the explanatory gap, up to their neck, and they have no idea of how to get out. Nor do they really want to, of course, for it really feels good down there, it's all cozy and warm, bathing in your own tedious imaginary world, full of ignorance and smugness, without actually accomplishing anything of value in the real world. Mental causation, yeah, that's the problem we're told, that's the real issue. You cannot explain it without woo, and, well, you cannot explain woo without more woo. That's all there is in the book, and it can be formalized as follows:

Leo: You should read two supposed objectives to the doctrine of immortality by William James to find out what the theory entails. Also their mention about the transmission theory here by Michael Grosso

Then he mentions how the transmission theory is implausible because it violates Occams Razor, which is a cop out because that objection can be used against the many world interpretation too well we thought so but many physicists believe they have found strong evidence for parellel universes. So it clearly is a cop out, because Occam's Razor isn't really about how complex the theory is, but if the data support the theory or not.

Another commenter Keith mentions

At the most basic level, though, the issue isn't an issue of mere simplicity, at least in the sense of saying production only postulates a brain, whereas transmission postulates a brain and immaterial mind, and so is less simple (i.e., two things are less simple than one). It's not simply that the immaterial soul is an unnecessarily entity, like the car engine demon, that one needn't invoke to explain how minds or cars work. It's that the immaterial soul couldn't even explain how minds work even if we did postulate it.

Leo: I disagree that is what makes the transmission theory more plausible is that it can account for all of the data from all fields of research. If you think all research and experiments in parapsychology and psychical research is a absolute waste of time then the production theory looks more plausible.

Keith: Their solution is basically, yes, the brain does all of these things when alive, but perhaps "the soul" comes to use some other brain after death. As I said, you might as well postulate bodily resurrection at that point. The whole point of the soul hypothesis is to explain how it is that we have the minds that we know directly, here and now. When proponents give up on that and postulate some other kind of mind we might have postmortem, they are in essence conceding that the soul is not only unnecessary to explain our "embodied" minds but that it can't explain them even if we grant that there is such a thing. They are conceding that the brain in necessary for the minds we know about! What more is there to say at that point? Postulating some secondary brain that takes over what the "organic" brain has done all along is the equivalent, in my view, of postulating aliens that direct the behavior of the humans who make crop circles. Sure, it's logically possible, but it certainly isn't a very plausible view to hold.

Leo: We never said any such thing, we said that our in our physical world, the physical body and brain receives our mind. That is that the soul, is connected to the embodied mind and the brain. Really? isn't if dualism is right everything is dual in nature?. So why couldn't their be a double brain if their is a double body?. So what is a plausible view for us dualists who postulate a soul, breathe of life [vitalism]. Clearly that would not be much of a soul their at all. Neither would by saying the soul is just energy because who we are is clearly memories, personality etc. The only one i can think of is a double body that is almost a duplicate copy of a physical body, so yes it would have a etheric brain. The view that the soul is very similiar to the physical body but in a slightly different form is very consistent with the survival hypothesis. Where the view, that the soul is energy is not so consistent with the evidence we have to date, neither is the view that the soul is the breathe of life.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

There was a post made yesterday from Adamwho which is a member of the forum infidels forum. One of just arguments was that their is no organ in the brain that can receives signals from another person's brain. This is of course assuming that the brain isn't a receiver for the mind[information] itself. According to Adamwho their isn't, but no where in the post does he show why the brain can't be a complex receiver of the mind instead of the producer of the mind. If their is a soul which i see a ton of evidence that support it, it wouldn't be a jump to consider the possibility that the soul itself is the organ that decodes such EM signals in the brain.

Here's his post

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=273617

Dr. Dean Radin mentions too in a youtube about the electromagnetic conditions and their affect on psi performance.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Physiology gives the indication that their is no soul, only mind and brain. This mind being a process of the brain. However, once you step outside conventional wisdom that their is no soul when it comes to neuroscience then you start to see that the conventional wisdom may not be correct. Evidence for survival of bodily death and psi phenomena indicate strongly, that the view that mind is a process of the brain ignores any evidence to the contrary. This is a easy way to avoid the possible conclusion itself.

It is said by a large number of neuroscientists that mind is a process of the brain and that evidence has been dramatically increases more and more as time goes on. Especially in the advent of fmri's. The problem is their is obviously more than one way to look at the evidence accumulated. The materialist will say that the theory that mind is filter, received by the brain instead of produced by the brain can be shaved off. That the view that mind is produced by the brain is simpler way of looking at the very strong correlations of mind and brain. True it's simpler, but does it account for all phenomena. A good theory should not just account for what it can account for but should be able to cover all well attested phenomena.

If you assume that psi phenomena and survival evidence doesn't exist or is very weak then it's easy of course to accept that mind is produced by the brain. However if you accept the evidence for survival and psi [which has been shown to exist by conventional scientific standards] then the theory that mind is filter and received by the brain is the simplest theory to take. Now when a materialist admits that yes psi phenomena has been shown to exist by scientific standards, they will a lot of the time fall back by saying well "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. This is a complete cop out because first of all what would create such extraordinary evidence. Replicated repeatable results yes? apparently not, it seems that this statement keeps the skeptics safe to the point of when their is very strong evidence for survival and psi they come up with this statement.

So are materialists really looking for the truth here?. I would say they could be, if they could gives us what they mean by extraordinary evidence. After many decades and centuries it seems as though its becoming very apparent what they mean by it. Its a way to ignore and avoid opposing data that doesn't fit into their materialistic worldview. So where is the soul? well i would say by looking at the evidence from survival that it's in the body. When death happens the soul leaves the physical body and takes a life of its own. The soul is a duplicate of the physical body but made of different kind of energy and matter.

For an examle of a skeptic admitting that remote viewing has been shown to exist by the scientific method.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

I just watched the Orphan last night its a really good movie i give me probably 7 stars out of 10!!!. Just in case you don't know its a horror movie. I will say it is a great horror movie definitely worth watching.

Here is the trailer for the movie

Oh one more thing i need to talk about hurricane Bob. It is now a category 4 hurricane with max substained winds of 215 km/h. It looks like it will be a category 1 hurricane maybe category 2 hurricane when it comes to Nova Scotia. I am keeping my eyes on this hurricane.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

When a view fails to produce any evidence in it's favor we tend to look into another direction. This other direction would be Quantum Mechanics, for skeptics they see the meshing of consciousness and quantum physics as a non sequitor!. This is like saying well their is no reason whatsoever to look in quantum physics for the answer of consciousness, no let's keep looking at it from classical physics instead. A growing number of physicists, neuroscientists, and philosophers that consciousness could be a quantum mechanical phenomenon after all.

Their is a lot of talk that the brain is too warm to be performing quantum computations but that arguments appears to not to be true. However Hameroff refutes this argument put forth by Max Tegmark. He says that Tegmark's formula for the decoherence time includes a factor of the square root of T in the numerator, meaning that higher temperatures would lead to higher decoherence times. Tegmark's rejoinder keeps the factor of the square root of T for the decoherence time.

Here in New Glasgow we are getting some very hot weather today it got up to 34 degrees with the humidex being higher. This summer for me has been very lousy my poor father still is going through major depression. He has no car, so we haven't gone anywheres this summer. I am now saving money for christmas so i can buy presents for everyone.

Monday, August 10, 2009

I guess it depends on how you see this problem itself, for example their are many problems in the way memory relates to the brain itself. We as survivalists are apparently suppose to accept the so called hard truth that memories are somehow generated by the brain not filtered or received by the brain. No dualist denies that memory is related to the brain but where we differ from materialists is we see that memory could survive death after the brain is destroyed. Keith Augustine asks what would a survivalist consider proof of personal extinction after death?. First, the word proof their doesn't exist in science. Science deals with probability and evidence. With that said what evidence would convince a survivalist of personal extinction?. Well i'm sure if their was zero evidence for survival or very little of it then extinction would be more likely than not.

In my view that appears not to be the case. So why you may ask after researching and evaluating the evidence from both sides, why have i sided with survival?. Well the evidence looks to be consistent and overwhelming where the case against survival has many holes in it. But not just many holes either but the evidence used to support it can be interpreted to support survival.

Here are the 10 unsolved mysteries of the brain and mind

How is information coded in neural activity?How are memories stored and retrieved?What does the baseline activity in the brain represent?How do brains simulate the future?What are emotions?What is intelligence?How is time represented in the brain?Why do brains sleep and dream?How do the specialized systems of the brain integrate with one another?What is consciousness?

Friday, August 7, 2009

Here is another argument i have found recently being used against mind body dualism.

Well, do we have any proof there's such a thing as "immaterial sense organs"? How do they work exactly? For example, sound is the product of pressure oscillations in the air, so the immaterial body would need to have something that reacts to air pressure. But if it's immaterial, air doesn't exert pressure against anything, therefore an immaterial body can't possibly hear anything. Same argument can be made about sight and photons. So can you please explain the mechanisms of these immaterial sense organs?

Response: What we know is to communicate with spirits we do it through other people that are gifted we call them mediums. Not all mediums are genuine of course, many are frauds, deluded etc. However some have withstood the test of time such as Leonard Piper. That's not too say souls don't have immaterial sense organs but it's clear that need a medium another person to get their messages through to the grieving. Now what about out of body experiences and remote viewing evidence that shows that their probably is immaterial sense organs?. My view is that hearing, seeing all of these appear to be their the exact mechanisms of why this happens, is not time at this time. To hear sounds normally, we interact with sound waves. The immaterial soul would interact with these sound waves, remember when i say immaterial i am meaning it's subjective qualities not the entity itself. The entity itself is probably another kind of matter and energy. To a materialist their is no need of a immaterial soul to explain out of body experiences for example because of the fact that we hear sounds, see things etc, with our sensory organs interacting with physical processes. But the fact is when their is cardiac arrest the hearts stops and that cuts blood flow to the brain, the longer this goes on for the more brain damage occurs and so does the level of brain activity dramatically diminishes.

So for that said in order for Keith Augustine's theory of hallucinations to work their needs to be sufficent brain activity to account for the very high mental functions that go on in these experiences. But their is another problem here and that is patients appear to report things while being unconsciousness and very little brain activity that turn out to be accurate. These reports are colloborated by doctors and nurses. A skeptic route to take that some skeptics take is say their is no evidence for psi and survival of bodily death. This is dishonest in the extreme, because even skeptics that have read the literature may say that the evidence is very weak in their opinion but they do say that it's dishonest to say their is no evidence. I would agree with that, but i would not agree on the strength of the evidence being very weak but being very strong and overwhelming.

Monday, August 3, 2009

I was thinking perhaps, i should also come up with my own rebuttal to a skeptic from a magazine called Skeptic but decided not too based on the fact that two bloggers already have. I find their rebuttals very good, so i feel their is no need to add to that. One of the rebuttals is from Jime, who has a blog called "Subversive thinking" which covers some of the topics i write here. Another rebuttal, is from best selling author Michael Prescott he also writes on some of the topics i write about here.

Ok ok their one thing, i want to address something that did get under my skin and that is the skeptic mentioned that the cross correspondences etc, are all "GHOST STORIES". Why you ask? because anyone that has actually studied the evidence knows that these are not just ghost stories, making a false statement, such as that one is what Sebastian does to help and protect materialism. True their is a lot of anecdotes in psychical research however their has also been experiments done mediums. To water it all down to ghost stories makes a person wonder if he actually looked at the evidence. I should point out i am really surprised because this is a familiar tactic the skeptic, uses to make a person not familiar with the evidence for survival think that their is nothing there but anecdotes.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

- I would of got more involved in sports in school- Should of told that girl that i loved her- Should of not stolen- Should of saved money, put it into the bank- Should of took less sick days off in grade 10